


Bucky Barnes, Dog Whisperer

by nex_et_nox



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:19:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/pseuds/nex_et_nox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For as long as Steve's known him, Bucky has had an affinity with dogs. Everyone else agrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bucky Barnes, Dog Whisperer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [burnhamofvulcan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnhamofvulcan/gifts).



The intelligence community as a whole didn’t really believe in the Winter Soldier, but they keep track of all the rumors and gossip. What information about him, if it can be called information, is boiled down to a few things:

He has a metal arm with a red star on the shoulder. He uses untraceable bullets with Soviet rifling. He’s an unparalleled sniper, a fucking _ghost_. Probably Russian, given the first two, but no one’s really sure.

The last thing they know is that you better not have guard dogs. They don’t do jack shit against the Soldier. Not because he’s stealthy enough to slip past them – though he definitely could – but because any dogs that are pitted up against him inevitably turn against their masters. They don’t attack their masters…

But they certainly don’t attack the Soldier.

* * *

 A couple times over the decades, when the Soldier has surfaced again, someone swears they’ve seen him petting dogs. Given the information the intelligence community has gathered, it’s possible that this has actually happened, but not very probable.

What kind of assassin halts their job to pet dogs?

* * *

“Oh, hell,” one of the technicians mutters, staring through the CCTV at what the Soldier is currently doing. “Not again.”

“What?” Rumlow leans over, looking at the monitor. He frowns. “Is he…petting a dog?”

Everyone in the room sighs in frustration.

“Almost seventy years and we still haven’t fixed that glitch,” the technician by Rumlow says, frowning. “No matter what we do, whenever he sees a dog he just – stops the mission.”

“What the hell,” Rumlow says, not really sure what to do with this.

* * *

 Natasha tells Steve everything she knows about the Winter Soldier – not that there’s much concrete information to be had.

Well. She tells him almost everything.

The thing with the dogs probably isn’t worth mentioning.

* * *

 Once, back in the war, they were trying to figure out a way to break into a HYDRA compound. They had a lot of guard dogs circling the perimeter. Steve immediately looked at Bucky.

“I’ve got it,” he said, grinning.  

The rest of the Commandos tried to protest, but Bucky was already gone.

“He’s going to get ripped to pieces,” Dum Dum predicted morosely, just before they got the all clear signal and headed to work.

An hour later, the compound was cleared. They walked out the front gate to see Bucky siting by a tree, surrounded by what looked like all the dogs that had been there. All their tails were wagging.

“How,” Gabe asked flatly.

Steve shrugged. “He’s always been good with dogs.”

* * *

The hardest part of that mission was figuring out what to do with all the dogs afterwards.  

Colonel Phillips was not amused.

* * *

There were a lot of dogs in Europe. There was not a single goddamn one that didn’t love Barnes on sight.

* * *

“Tell them about the story about Barnes and the dogs,” Monty says during one interview, when years have allowed the pain to dull some and they start to tell the press about some of the happiest memories.

“Which story?” Jim asks, smiling.

“Oh God,” Gabe says, “There are so many dog stories. And _so many of them_ are almost more unbelievable than the cow. They’re gonna think we’re making shit up about the war. God’s honest truth,” he tells the interviewer. “Whatever isn’t classified is actually, amazingly, what happened. Even all the stories with the dogs. _Especially_ all the stories with the dogs.”

“The man was a fucking dog whisperer,” Dum Dum says seriously.

Dernier says something in French and starts laughing.

* * *

“Where do we go first?” Sam asks as they leave the graveyard.

“…Are there dog fighting rings in D.C.?” Steve responds.

Sam looks at him. “Probably. Why?”

Steve smiles ruefully. “You don’t know how many alleyway dog fights we stepped into when we were teenagers. Nothing pissed Bucky off faster than people abusing dogs.”

“Huh,” Sam says, and leaves it at that.

* * *

 Steve actually met Bucky for the first time when he was eight and walking home from school and saw two older boys kicking a dog.

“Hey!” he yelled, and everything went downhill from there until another boy, who Steve was pretty sure was in the same grade as he was, got involved too. Even at eight, James Barnes had a pretty decent right hook.

“You okay?” Bucky asked breathlessly, after the two older boys finally cut their losses and ran.

“Yeah, fine,” Steve said distractedly. He was more concerned about the dog.

Bucky finally saw what had pulled Steve into the fight in the first place. His face darkened. “I shoulda kicked ‘em in the nuts,” he said, scowling. He knelt down next to Steve, helping to check on the dog. “James Barnes,” he added, a belated introduction.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve said, and smiled.

* * *

 When the Soldier is trying to figure out who he is, when he’s running from the man on the bridge ( _Steve_ ), when he’s trying to remember beyond the wipes that HYDRA subjected him to, he always stops for dogs. He pets them if they’re on the street, he gives a rusty smile if they lean their heads out of passing cars, he sits on benches in parks and watches people walk them.

He spends a lot of time burning down everything that HYDRA has done and made. He keeps on the move, because he’s not ready to face everything (everyone)(Steve). He also spends a lot of time volunteering in animal shelters.

He always works with the dogs.

When he finally feels more settled, when he has regained some sense of self and decided that he wants to go back to being called _Bucky_ and being part of SteveandBucky again, he sticks around the latest town for longer than he has in several months. He’s working at the animal shelter with the dogs when Steve comes.

“Hey,” Steve says.

“Hey,” Bucky says from where he’s buried underneath happy, sleepy dogs.

* * *

 The first time Bucky meets Lucky, Clint’s dog abandons him immediately.

“So much for man’s best friend,” Clint says, utterly betrayed. “First Kate takes the dog when she leaves and now he’s leaving me for another man.”

Steve, the bastard, just laughs.

* * *

 “Is he a mutant?” Clint asks, after a few days of Lucky always sticking around Bucky and any other dogs in the vicinity homing in on the former assassin as well. It’s really not fair.

“No, dogs just really like him,” Steve says, amused.

“I want his superpower,” Clint says glumly, completely ignoring what Steve has just said.  “Natasha’s a cat whisperer,” Clint adds. “She’s not a mutant either.” He thinks about it for a long moment. “Maybe it’s a Russian thing?”

“Being animal whisperers is a Russian thing?” Steve says doubtfully, not even going to go into the fact that while Bucky might have spent several years in Russia, he wasn’t actually Russian.

“I dunno,” Tony says, popping up to join the conversation. “Hammer kept yelling something about Vanko and a cockatoo…”

They all sit there and think about that for a while.

Lucky plants his head in Bucky’s lap and starts drooling happily.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone said something about dogs and Bucky Barnes? 
> 
> Happy birthday, JBB.


End file.
